eProcurement Forum Uptake of pre-awarding phases ... - ePractice.eu

up procurement thinking and is delivering tangible economic development benefits to the
supplier community who use it.
Building upon their involvement in the creation of the NPP, Value Wales are now also
running a significant pan Wales eProcurement programme, XchangeWales
(www.xchangewales.co.uk) that provides a framework of 'free to use' tools. The tools
available are designed to help public sector procurement organisations begin to fully
embrace eProcurement. The NPP forms the key 'first step' of this programme, and is
seen as an 'e-Information' stepping stone to more transactional services such as e-
Tendering, eProcurement etc.
3.4 Virtual Company Dossier – Josef Makolm (PEPPOL)
Josef Makolm introduces the VCD (Virtual Company Dossier) as one of the eight work
packages of the EU-project PEPPOL 1 ; which aims to set up a pan-European pilot
solution that, conjointly with existing national solutions, facilitates EU-wide interoperable
public eProcurement. The vision is that any company in the EU can communicate
electronically with an European governmental institution for the entire procurement
process. The VCD will thereby support the economic operator in creating an electronic
information package consisting of the required documentation, evidences, proof,
attestations, certificates, declarations and metadata. Thus the VCD can be seen as a
container for required documents.
The Austrian VCD implementation project will provide an IT-system, which not only
supports the economic operator in deciding which certificates and data he has to provide
when answering an Austrian call for tender or a call for tender of another EU member
state but is also assembling the VCD package automatically. The VCD system will be
able to select and call the (IT-)services providing the needed data, efficiently orchestrate
the necessary processes, collect the results and pack it into a VCD package following an
internationally agreed upon semantic schema.
The core component of the Austrian VCD implementation is the osSso Machine, which is
based on the idea of a semantically enriched service oriented architecture, shortly
SSOA. This osSso machine operates on top of an ontology which describes all national
and international legal rule sets. Furthermore all services provide a semantical
description in terms of the legal ontology about their needed input data and their
expected output data. Tasks of the osSso machine are to determine the matching criteria
and missing evidences, to discover suitable services, and finally to create the service
chains which are to be executed by the VCD execution engine. The osSso approach
thus avoids in advance defined process rules and execution processes. Each tenderers
specifically needed evidences are determined “on-the-fly” and the best service chain,
e.g. concerning costs or time, is provided. This makes the osSso approach flexible with
respect to legal rule changes or the introduction of new services, i.e. it suffices adapting
the ontology or simply provide a new service.
1 PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line) is part of the Competitive and Innovation
Framework Programme (CIP) of the European Union. More information can be found under
www.peppol.eu
Report on the “Uptake of pre-awarding phases in eProcurement” Workshop – Vienna, 22nd
February 2010
Page 18 of 29